Over the weekend, the New Yorker ran a highly entertaining piece titled “After ‘Barbie,’ Mattel Is Raiding Its Entire Toybox.” Offering a peek inside the gigantic toy company’s ongoing quest for box office domination, the piece largely focuses on the production of Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming Barbie, but also sheds a bit of light on Mattel’s plans going forward.
Believe it or not, those plans call for a horror-comedy based on the company’s ubiquitous Magic 8 Ball toy:
Jimmy Warden, the screenwriter of Cocaine Bear, had devised a horror-comedy about the Magic 8 Ball … The approach, Brenner told me afterward, had been a subject of some debate.
“We’re not going to make any rated-R movies,” she promised. Although the Magic 8 Ball script “walks the line a little bit,” she went on, “we’re not going to make anything that feels violent, or that is alienating to families. . . . We want to stay within the parameters of what Mattel is.”
On the one hand, we never honestly expected to see a movie based on the Magic 8 Ball, much less so a family-friendly(ish) horror-comedy based on the Magic 8 Ball. But if anyone’s gonna step up to that plate and make it work, we suppose it does make sense that it’d be Cocaine Bear‘s Jimmy Warden. We’re very curious to find out what sort of lunacy he’s bringing to the table on this particular property.
No word on when the Magic 8 Ball movie will begin filming or when we can expect it, but rest assured that Team FANGORIA will be keeping its collective ear to the ground for further updates on this one. Stay tuned for those, gang!
